Your voice needs to be heard. In December 2015, President Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) into law. It includes language regarding “effective school library programs”, yet school librarian positions in the state of Illinois are disappearing. ISLMA has issued a statement regarding the loss of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) library positions. It is their hope that the work ISLMA and others have been doing regarding ESSA will help reverse this trend.

Illinois Heartland Library System (IHLS) is an organization dedicated to providing high quality services to its 539 members in central and southern Illinois. Our primary annual revenue is the System Area and Per Capita (SAPC) grant from the Illinois State Library/Secretary of State. For several years the annual grant appropriation for IHLS has been approximately $3.36 M. We very recently learned from the Illinois State Library our appropriation for the current fiscal year (July 1, 2015 - June 30, 2016) will be approximately $1.97 M--a decrease of 42%.

IHLS placed a bulk order of the latest edition of Illinois Library Laws & Rules (2015)!

The books are available to our members at $22.50/copy. We strongly recommend all members have at least one copy for their library due to the very recent changes in the Library System service standards. The books are also available to ILA members for $25/copy and $50/copy for nonmembers.